World Animales

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

25 Primates about To Disappear

Sri Lanka’s Hor

ton Plains slender loris has been seen just four times since 1937. Miss Waldron’s red c

olobus monkey was not found in an exhaustive six-year study en

ding in 1999 and there have been no definite sightings since. Vietnam’s golden-headed langur and the Hainan gibbon in China both number in the dozens.

These are the primate species on the edge of oblivion and, according to a report commissioned by three leading conservation charities, scores of others of our closest relatives are poised to suffer the

same fate. It names the top 25 species most in need of help but concludes that 114 primate species are also close to extinction.

The 25 species most at risk include two of our closest great ape cousins, the Cross River gorilla of Came

roon and Nigeria and the orang-utan from Sumatra. Miss Waldron’s colobus also makes it on to the list, although more by hope than expectation. Conservationists declared it officially extinct in 2000, but a photograph taken since then of a similar-looking creature has been tentatively identified by scientists.

The document was compiled by 60 leading primatologists from the world conservation

union, the International Primatological Society and Conservation International. The list includes 11 species from Asia, seven from Africa, four from Madagascar and three from South America.

“You could fit all the surviving members of these 25 species in a single football stadium; that’s

how few of them remain on Earth today,” said Russell Mittermeier, the president of Conservation International.

“The situation is worst in Asia, where tropical forest destruction and the hunting and trading of monkeys puts many species at terrible risk. Even newly discovered species are severely threatened from loss of habitat and could soon disappear.”

The report follows assessments in 2000, 2002 and 2004. “Overall the problems are increasing,” said Eckhard Heymann at the

German Primate Centre in Goettingen, one of the report’s authors. Common problems are habitat loss du

e to logging for timber or oil and mineral extraction, plus bushmeat hunting. The two i

ssues are related because roads cut through tropical forests for logging trucks help give hunters easier routes to wildlife. “Every additional access to remove areas increases the access to hunters,” Dr Heymann added.

Another problem is habitat destruction to make space for biofuel plantations such as oil palm. Developed economies such as the US and Europe

are pledging to use more sustainable energy sources to combat climate change, but this is having a knock-on effect on tropical wildlife.

“It is creating a huge market and now in several countries politicians are thinking of converting tropical forest areas to palm plantations,”

he said.

This particularly affects orang-utan populations. Although they still number in the low thousands, they are disappearing as a faster rate than any other primate species.

Dr Heymann said there had been some successes since the previous report. The golden lion tamarin from eastern Brazil, for example, had benefited from a concerted conservation cam

paign which involved protecting fragments of forest where it lives and breeding it in captivity. “There are still not much more than 1,000 but they are stable and no longer declining,” said Dr Heymann. “The species is not yet safe but still it’s a success story.”

Most endangered

Madagascar

Greater bamboo lemur (Pr olemur simus); White-collared lemur (Eulemur albocollaris); Sahamalaza Peninsula sportive lemur (Lepilemur sahamalazensis); Silky sifaka (Propithecus candidus)

Nigeria, Cameroon

Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gor

illa diehli)

Ivory Coast, Ghan

Miss Waldron’s red colobus (Procolobus badius); Roloway monkey (Cercopithecus diana roloway)

Tanzania

Rondo dwarf galago (Galagoides rondoensis); Kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji)

Kenya

Tana River red colobus (Procolobus rufomitratus)

Equatorial Guinea

Penn

ant’s red colobus (Procolobus pennantii pennantii) (Island of Bioko)

Colombia, Venezuela

Variegated spider monkey (Ateles hybridus)

Colombia, Ecuador

Brown-headed spider monkey (Ateles fusciceps)

Peru

Peruvian yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Oreonax flavicauda)

Bangladesh, India, Burma

Western Hoolock gibbon (Hoolock hoolock)

Sri Lanka

Horton Plains slender loris (Loris tardigradus nycticeboides); Western purple-faced langur (Semnopithecus vetulus nestor); Pig-tailed langur (Simias concolor)

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/26/4838/print/

Indonesia (Mentawai Islands)

Indonesia Pig-tailed langur (Simias concolor) (Mentawai Islands); Sumatran orang-utan (Pongo abelii) (Sumatra); Siau Island tarsier (Tarsius sp.)

Vietnam

Delacour’s langur (Trachypithecus delacouri); Golden-headed langur (Trachypithecus poliocephalus poliocephalus); Grey-shanked douc (Pygathrix cinerea); Tonkin snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus avunculus)

China

Hainan black-crested gibbon (Nomascus hainanus) (Hainan Island)

o re

ad a related article.

Animals' rights

WASHINGTON - Military researchers have dressed live pigs in body armor and strapped them into Humvee simulators that were then blown up with explosives to study the link between roadside bomb blasts and brain injury.

For an 11-month period that ended in December, researchers subjected pigs and rats to about 200 blasts, according to Pentagon documents and interviews. The explosions have ranged in intensity, wounding some of the pigs and killing others. Roadside bombs are the top killer of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The research on pigs has determined that body armor does not worsen brain injury, said Jan Walker, a spokeswoman for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which conducted the study. The military feared body armor would deflect the force of blasts toward the head and increase the risk of brain injury.

The research also shows that body armor protects troops' lungs and is critical to surviving blasts.

"If use of animal subjects in testing results in our ability to save lives or prevent injury to our troops, we're confident this is the right thing to do," Walker said. Pigs without body armor died from blasts within 24 to 48 hours, while those with armor survived "significantly higher blasts," she said.

Blasting pigs raises "red flags," said Martin Stephens, vice president for animal research issues at the Humane Society of the United States.

"This is a worthy goal, trying to prevent soldiers from being injured by roadside bombs," Stephens said. "I think the relevance of this is highly questionable. People are not pigs."

Col. Geoffrey Ling, who led the study, said pigs are good subjects because their brains are more similar to human brains than those of rats. Pig hearts and lungs are also similar to humans'.

The Pentagon complied with policies that ensure that a minimal number of animals were used in the testing and that they were treated humanely at all times, Walker said.

Scientists discovered details that will help protect troops, said Michael Leggieri, director of the Pentagon's Blast Injury Research Program. "The bottom line to everything we do in this program is to protect the soldier," he said.

DARPA declined to say where the tests had taken place. The next round of the testing is scheduled for later this year.

Stephens called on the Pentagon to end testing on pigs. "Is this the best they can do after several years of losing soldiers to roadside bombs?" he said.

U.S. car companies used live animals, including pigs, for crash tests until the early 1990s. They stopped after protests from animal rights groups, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

MR.KAKAR

Ligue de Protection des Oiseaux (LPO)

Lors de sa Conférence mondiale*, BirdLife International, dont la LPO est le représentant officiel en France, a présenté son nouveau rapport sur l’Etat des populations d’oiseaux dans le monde**. Cette publication montre le rôle capital des oiseaux comme indicateurs de l’état de la biodiversité, souligne la baisse de leurs effectifs mondiaux et présente les raisons de ce déclin ainsi que les solutions pour y remédier.

Les oiseaux : de précieux indicateurs de biodiversité

Les 10 000 espèces d’oiseaux répertoriées dans le monde sont nos yeux et nos oreilles : ils sont présents et visibles au quotidien pratiquement partout, à terre, en mer et dans quasiment tous les milieux. Ils sont donc un baromètre précis et pratique de la répartition de la biodiversité et du changement de l’environnement mondial.

Un déclin généralisé de l’avifaune

Aujourd’hui, une espèce d’oiseau sur huit est menacée d’extinction (1 226 espèces) et 190 sont « En danger critique d’extinction ». Les espèces les plus menacées sont celles de grande taille ou aux faibles taux de reproduction, comme les albatros (82 %), les grues (60 %), les perroquets (27 %), les faisans (23 %) et les pigeons (20 %).

Les espèces d’oiseaux communs sont également fortement menacées. Ainsi, en Europe, depuis 26 ans, près de la moitié (45 %) d’entre elles subissent un déclin (soit 56 espèces sur 124 étudiées). Les populations de la tourterelle des bois Streptopelia turtur ont, par exemple, diminué de 62 % sur cette période. La situation est également difficile pour les oiseaux des régions agricoles, comme le bruant proyé, qui a reculé de plus de 60 % entre 1982 et 2005, et l’outarde canepetière qui a subi un déclin de 90 % durant ces trente dernières années.

Des menaces d’origine humaine

L’expansion et l’intensification des industries agro-alimentaires et halieutiques, l’exploitation forestière, la colonisation des espèces invasives, la pollution, la surexploitation des oiseaux sauvages et le changement climatique constituent des menaces majeures. Les causes de déclin sont également plus profondes : les systèmes économiques qui ne reconnaissent pas l’immense valeur de la nature, les déséquilibres mondiaux en terme de puissance et de richesse, la destruction des ressources naturelles, une démographie et une consommation individuelle en constante augmentation.

Des solutions pour sauver l’avifaune et la biodiversité dans son ensemble

- soutenir d’avantage les travaux de conservation ;

- s’assurer que les engagements internationaux en faveur de la biodiversité sont rapidement mis en pratique ;
- mettre en place une bonne gouvernance environnementale ;

- investir plus et mieux ;

- rattacher la protection de la biodiversité à la subsistance et au bien-être des peuples ;

- développer d’importants groupes d’intérêts pour conduire au changement, comme le font BirdLife et ses représentants dans le monde (c’est le cas de la LPO en France);

- protéger les 10 000 Zones Importantes pour la Conservation des Oiseaux ;

- initier d’avantage de programmes en faveur des espèces menacées…

Bien que les gouvernements du monde se soient engagés à stopper la perte de biodiversité d’ici 2010, un oiseau sur huit est aujourd’hui menacé d’extinction et près de la moitié des oiseaux communs européens sont en déclin. La frilosité des grands mondiaux à engager des sommes souvent insignifiantes au regard de leur budget national indique également que cet objectif ne sera vraisemblablement pas atteint.

Allain Bougrain Dubourg
Président de la LPO

http://www.lpo.fr/comm/cpetatdespopulationsoiseauxdansmonde.shtml

Articles/videos:

MR.KAKAR

The Planet's First-ever Mass-Extinction

Should we be alarmed at the current massive die-offs being noted in the animal and plant kingdoms? After all, new species arise and old species die off all the time. Its just nature taking its course, right? Not necessarily. The Earth is now entering the sixth mass extinction event in its four-billion-year history, but what’s different about this die-off is that this is the only such event precipitated by a biotic agent: humans.

The extinction numbers far outweigh the emergence of new species. From a purely selfish perspective, humans should be very concerned. Since we haven’t terraformed Mars yet, we still need a livable ecosystem on this planet in order to survive. As mass extinction occurs, experts say that we end up dealing with serious consequences. Recently, a team of scientists have discovered new information, that indicates things are worse than we previously thought.

"There's no question that we are in a mass extinction spasm right now," said David Wake, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley. "Amphibians have been around for about 250 million years. They made it through when the dinosaurs didn't. The fact that they're cutting out now should be a lesson for us."

A recent study supported by The National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, found that nearly all of the amphibian species that inhabit the peaks of the Sierra Nevada are threatened. Wake and Vance Vredenburg, research associate at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley and assistant professor of biology at San Francisco State University discovered that for two of these species, the Sierra Nevada Yellow-legged Frog and the Southern Yellow-legged Frog, populations over the last few years declined by 95 to 98 percent, even in highly protected areas such as Yosemite National Park. This means that each local frog population has dwindled to 2 to 5 percent of its former size! Originally, frogs living atop the highest, most remote peaks seemed to thrive, but recently, they are also dying off.

In an article published online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers argue that substantial die-offs of amphibians and other plant and animal species force us to accept that a new mass extinction is facing the planet.

Frogs are certainly not the only victims in this mass extinction, Wake noted. Many other scientists studying other organisms are discovering similarly dramatic effects.

Over 10,000 scientists in the World Conservation Union have compiled data showing that currently 51 per cent of known reptiles, 52 per cent of known insects, and 73 per cent of known flowering plants are in danger along with many mammals, birds and amphibians. It is likely that some species will become extinct before they are even discovered, before any medicinal use or other important features can be assessed. The cliché movie plot where the cure for cancer is about to be annihilated is more real than anyone would like to imagine.

"Our work needs to be seen in the context of all this other work, and the news is very, very grim," Wake said.

As of yet, there is no consensus among the scientific community about when exactly the current mass extinction started, notes Wake. It may have been 10,000 years ago, when humans first came from Asia to the Americas and hunted many of the large mammals to extinction. It may have started after the Industrial Revolution, when the human population exploded. Or, we might be seeing the start of it right now. But whatever the start date, empirical data clearly show that extinction rates have dramatically increased over the last few decades.

Peter Raven, past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, states in the foreword to their publication AAAS Atlas of Population and Environment, "We have driven the rate of biological extinction, the permanent loss of species, up several hundred times beyond its historical levels, and are threatened with the loss of a majority of all species by the end of the 21st century."

The causes of biocide are a hodge-podge of human environmental “poisons” which often work synergistically, including a vast array of pollutants and pesticides that weaken immunity and make plants and animals more susceptible to microbial and fungal infections, human induced climate change, habitat loss from agriculture and urban sprawl, invasions of exotic species introduced by humans, illegal and legal wildlife trade, light pollution, and man-made borders among other many other causes.

Is there a way out? The answer is yes and no. We’ll never regain the lost biodiversity-at least not within a fathomable time period, but there are ways to help prevent what many experts believe is a coming worldwide bio collapse. The eminent Harvard biologist Edward O Wilson has wisely noted that the time has come to start calling the "environmentalist view" the "real-world view". We can’t ignore reality simply because it doesn’t conform nicely within convenient boundaries and moneymaking strategies. After all, what good will all of our conveniences do for us, if we keep generating them in ways that collectively destroy the necessities of life?

Posted by Rebecca Sato.

Whitey on the Jacuzzi in the backyard.

Sharks are an amazingly diverse group of creatures and defining them is not as easy as it looks. Although they are all fish, they differ enormously in their body shape, size, habitat, behaviour and diet. Many of them look nothing like the animals we associate with the classic image of a shark – some are almost flat, bottom-dwellers, while others are strange-looking creatures that live at enormous depths. But there are some features that are common to all sharks:

Unlike other fish, sharks have a skeleton made of cartilage, rather than bone. The skeleton is reinforced in some places with special plates, called tesserae, which are made of hard calcium salts.
Sharks all have teeth that are produced and shed at regular intervals. Some sharks can produce several thousand teeth every year, the old ones working themselves loose and being replaced by a new row of teeth behind them.
Even a shark’s skin has teeth! A defining characteristic of sharks is the presence of tooth-like scales covering its skin, called dermal denticles. It’s these denticles that give a shark’s skin its resemblance to sandpaper.
Sharks have at least five pairs of vertical gill slits, which are almost always mounted on the side of the head. Some species have as many as seven pairs of gill slits.

Most other fish possess
swim-bladders to help keep them afloat, but sharks lack any trace of swim-bladders and use other means of maintaining their buoyancy.

Cat shark